God is infinitely angry with sin, yet He grants mercy to sinners through the shed blood of His Son. This is mercy. Infinite anger is replaced with infinite mercy by the atoning blood of Jesus. In this sense, the fear of God is a response to mercy. And, when someone grants you mercy, you want to draw near to them. You want to be with them. You do not want to run away... Gratitude turns to a fear that draws near. And those who fear God, not only run toward Him, they find that God draws near to them.

"Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, On those who hope in His mercy" (Psalm 33:18).

He comes sinless, pays for my sin, imputes, when I believe in Him alone for salvation, imputes both his passive obedience of paying for sin to me and his active obedience of obeying the law perfectly to me and says, here, here's everything. And he takes over my hell and my sin and gives me his heavenly merits. And so I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude, but also overwhelmed with a childlike fear of God. In the midst of that gratitude, as I stand at the cross and consider, you know, those thorns in his crown are my sins. Those nails are my sins.

That bleeding heart, that agonizing cry, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's my sin that motivated that. Mary Winslow, 19th century young, mother of Octavius Winslow, who wrote some beautiful letters, very godly woman, she said, if Jesus had to go to the cross just for me, he would have had to suffer every bit as much as he did. Because my sins are infinite and demand an infinite satisfaction from an infinite son. And only an infinite satisfaction can please an infinite God who's infinitely angry with my sin.

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